“Yes, to-morrow I shall go away.”

His face was still turned from her, and his voice sounded as if it spoke to someone at a distance, someone who could hear as man cannot hear.

“To-morrow,” she repeated.

She knew she had spoken again, but it did not seem to her as if she had heard herself speak.  She looked at her hands holding the reins, knew that she looked at them, yet felt as if she were not seeing them while she did so.  The moonlit desert was surely flickering round her, and away to the horizon in waves that were caused by the disappearance of that ship which had suddenly foundered with all its countless lives.  And she knew of the movement of these waves as the soul of one of the drowned, already released from the body, might know of the movement on the surface of the sea beneath which its body was hidden.

But the soul was evidently nothing without the body, or, at most, merely a continuance of power to know that all which had been was no more.  All which had been was no more.

At last her mind began to work again, and those words went through it with persistence.  She thought of the fascination of Africa, that enormous, overpowering fascination which had taken possession of her body and spirit.  What had become of it?  What had become of the romance of the palm gardens, of the brown villages, of the red mountains, of the white town with its lights, its white figures, its throbbing music?  And the mystical attraction of the desert—­where was it now?  Its voice, that had called her persistently, was suddenly silent.  Its hand, that had been laid upon her, was removed.  She looked at it in the moonlight and it was no longer the desert, sand with a soul in it, blue distances full of a music of summons, spaces, peopled with spirits from the sun.  It was only a barren waste of dried-up matter, arid, featureless, desolate, ghastly with the bones of things that had died.

She heard the dogs barking by the tents of the nomads and the noises of the insects, but still she did not feel the horse underneath her.  Yet she was gradually recovering her powers, and their recovery brought with it sharp, physical pain, such as is felt by a person who has been nearly drowned and is restored from unconsciousness.

Androvsky turned round.  She saw his eyes fastened upon her, and instantly pride awoke in her, and, with pride, her whole self.

She felt her horse under her, the reins in her hands, the stirrup at her foot.  She moved in her saddle.  The blood tingled in her veins fiercely, bitterly, as if it had become suddenly acrid.  She felt as if her face were scarlet, as if her whole body flushed, and as if the flush could be seen by her companion.  For a moment she was clothed from head to foot in a fiery garment of shame.  But she faced Androvsky with calm eyes, and her lips smiled.

“You are tired of it?” she said.

“I never meant to stay long,” he answered, looking down.